Beginning "Mead-ist"

I've finally convinced my wife to "green light" my mead making. Im pretty excited about it. I just ordered Ken Schram's book as it seem like the best place to start. I have a general understanding of mead making but I want to have a firm grasp on it. Unlike beer, I was a bit perplexed regarding how you would make 1 mead, dry and 1 sweet without the benefit of say...mash temps! It appears that both the yeast strain as well as the % of honey used are the variables. I definitely need to get Schram's book read before making the first mead, but Im excited to get started.

 

Great book. It is definitely the place to start. Keep in mind that there are some updated tid bits.

Big one is that you don't need to boil the honey. It is already antimicrobial and you will loose a lot of nose and some of the more delicate flavors. I have done it both ways.

The other main thing is many of your flavors such as fruit should be put into the secondary fermentation.

Oaking helps out alot with the smoothing of the flavors and removing a bit of harshness from young meads.

Also, Be Patient! Once a mead has cleared it will take 6 months to a year for it to age properly. You do not need to age beer but with mead it's a month. This disapoints many that from start to finish could be as much as 18 months to 24 months (the longer time is if you are trying chocolate or Bananna Mead which has more oils that need broken down than normal).

Have fun and enjoy and before you know it you will have several carobys for mead in order to keep the stock up.

Matrix

 

I'm highly curious about Michael Fairweather's tidbits from podcasts with him. He does staggered nutrient dumps which allows him to have meads finish much much faster than previously believed (in many cases.) He recommends splitting the entire nutrient load into 4 additions, 1 each of the first 3 days and another when 2/3 (?) of the sugars have been consumed. I found it very intriguing. Im looking to just do some straight varietal meads in the dry to semi-sweet categories before I get into melomels and the like. Im truly excited!

 

Couldn't possibly agree more. That book not only got me into meadmaking, but got me interested in fermentation to the point that I started brewing beer. The rest is history.

 

If you're into podcasts, the Jamil Show had Ken Schramm on a while back. It's a pretty good overview.

 

Funny you mention it, I just listened to it on the way home from work! It was a good show!

 

Ken's book is a great resource. The only thing he's missing is staggered nutrient additions, which he now endorses. I think Hightest has some information on this in one of the pinned threads.